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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28182021">Arc</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede'>Guede</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Aerosmith (Band), Rock Music RPF, Steven Tyler (Musician)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blow Jobs, Breaking Up &amp; Making Up, Character Study, Hate Sex, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Jealousy, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Piano Sex, Songwriting, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:01:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28182021</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Semi-recursive road back.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe Perry/Steven Tyler</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Arc</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally written and posted to LiveJournal in 2012.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hot and sticky afterwards, higher than the bats fluttering around the goddamn lights in the rafters, peeling out of his stage clothes.  Steven’s talking in his ear, bitching about something, and he wants to tell the man to just shut up already, has wanted to do it since probably the third song in but didn’t want to stop playing, but he can’t really string two words together.  His arms are burning and his fingers are dangling from his palms like something’s unstrung them too.</p>
<p>They slip off his vest and he leans against the wall for a moment, head spinning, half his clothes twisted up in wet ropes around his chest.  The cadence of Steven’s voice reminds him of the half-beat before he comes on soloing and his fingers twitch to attention, running over the damp fabric clinging to his hips.  He moves his head against the wall, rough whitewashed brick scratching through his hair, watching his hands play across his legs.</p>
<p>Steven snaps at him, louder, and he looks up and the shadows cut Steven’s face to ribbons.  It’s like the first time, he thinks, blinking hard, not sure if he’s back behind this shitty little stage or behind a different one, couple years ago, his knees shaking as the slivers of Steven’s face stare up at his hands like so many needles pinning them back against his guitar.</p>
<p>His mouth moves, slow, like he’s swallowing a jar of molasses, and he can’t really hear what he’s saying, but that’s a recurring problem around Steven.  He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, Steven is right in front of them.  Joe closes his eyes again and Steven pushes them backwards, fingers beating four-four down Joe’s hips and then scissoring hard up into the crotch of his jeans, pulling him into the mouth driving him up the wall.  He’s so high he forgets for a moment and thinks Steven isn’t.</p>
<p>*	*	*</p>
<p>When he asked Steven to come, his hands were stuffed full of dirty napkins from cleaning up after the motherfuckers and his hair was glued in itchy loops across the back of his neck.  He doesn’t remember what was said, exactly, except that he got pissed off and he’s still convinced that that was what did it for the man.</p>
<p>He’s not vainer than any other asshole out there.  Angry’s a good look on him.  Steven’s never been able to get over it, whether they’re talking about fucking or not talking or not <i>talking</i>.  Anyway, it got Steven out there and looking up at him, for once.  Not going around behind his band, being the big one in town, showing every second how much more he knew and could do and could go, making Joe want to throw up when he wasn’t just fucking <i>wanting that</i>.  </p>
<p>Steven showed up and watched and watched, and maybe it was the rush of the music under his hands but Joe has to think for a very long time to remember the last time Steven kept his mouth shut for so long.  He’d taken that for a bad sign and gotten mad all over again up there, in the middle of the set, working his ass off and goddamn it, Steven.  When he’d come off he’d still been steaming and Steven had shoved him that time just to get his attention.  Woken him up and then he’d been staring at the man, watching him, watching his hands move and wave and his mouth move and his eyes and—and just.  He just.  He probably knew before that, getting as annoyed as he was but swallowing it down all the time, thinking if he could just show something, show a little of what he could do, he’d get it.  And what that was that he’d get.  If there’s a lesson to everything you do, then he figured he was just learning to wait for it.</p>
<p>Anger works.  That’s the lesson he got that night.</p>
<p>*	*	*</p>
<p>They all blur together.  Behind the stage is like behind the bus is like behind the fucking ice machine in the motel.  Later it got a little nicer.  Changed, and then stopped changing.  Nicer fucking walls in the dressing room, that kind of shit.  Steven on his knees, nails dragging down leather, grinding Joe’s ass back into the edge of the table.  Sometimes he looks down and the bottles and the blow and all the other pretty shiny things lying around them makes him think it’s winter.  But actually he doesn’t have any fucking idea what time or day or season it is.</p>
<p>Steven stops talking, is the idea.  Maybe.  A long time ago maybe it was more about the way Steven’s mouth fits against his body, the way he bends Joe with his hands, the way Joe sometimes shakes his head and sees the other man, like he’s seeing through the heat rising off the pavement, and wishes everything could just stop moving for a second so he can just.  Think.  But Steven stops talking and they aren’t talking anyway and they’re just fucking.  One of Steven’s hands scrabbles at the counter behind Joe and for a moment Joe’s head clears and he thinks <i>fucking now fucking cannot wait till I’m fucking done</i> and then he just leans back and grabs Steven’s head, because he doesn’t want to fucking think and doesn’t want to talk and doesn’t fucking care what Steven’s doing.  Whatever the fuck gets him through this.</p>
<p>There are, if Joe thinks about it, twenty-six more dates, fifteen fucking something cities, however many fucking days.  Running through the same songs and the same fights and the same fucks and so that’s why he doesn’t want to think about it.  He’s running low too, he realizes, and he puts his hand back but Steven’s got it all already, goddamn him.  And Steven is pulling his damn mouth away and Joe looks down, so fucking <i>mad</i> because if there’s one fucking thing Steven is not taking and then Joe comes.  Falls on his elbow against the table, his high crashing too, woozy, sick, and Steven’s already ten feet away on his hands and knees getting back on his fucking horse.  He’s always doing that these days.</p>
<p>So better to stay the fuck away anyway, people are saying.  Pointing out, really, what Joe’s known already for a long time.  That Steven is the one leaving, that he’s the one who never comes around, that he’s not going to hold it up or together or hold anything, really, so what the fuck.  Joe’s limbs fold in on themselves like paper crumpling and he slides down to the floor, and over there Steven’s snorting shit off the rug, Jesus.</p>
<p>He can’t think about this, he thinks.  He’s got to go.  He’s got to get up and go…do something, he thinks, and he sits there with his legs sprawled and empty.</p>
<p>*	*	*</p>
<p>In the beginning, it’s hard.  Steven is funny.  He’s an ass and a pain in the ass and a hopeless ham, but he keeps cracking Joe’s face, and he never stops trying to crack Joe’s face either.  He’s around morning noon and night, tossing an arm over Joe’s shoulder, fucking with Joe’s frets, cooing and cackling and catcalling till Joe opens his mouth to make the other man fuck off and instead laughs.</p>
<p>One morning he goes missing, sort of.  In that Joe stumbles out of his bedroom and makes coffee and he gets to use both arms to do that because Steven’s not trying to borrow one of them.  He’s thinking of maybe looking for the man when he hears the noise in the living room.</p>
<p>Tom’s missing too, but whatever.  Joe comes in with his mug and sits on the couch since Tom’s gone and tries to figure out how Steven is keeping eighty percent of himself on the piano bench.  There are ankles and random bunches of hair and sleeves dangling everywhere but Steven manages to flop around and snuggle down and keep on sleeping till he’s not.  He stares at Joe, confused, maybe high, till he kicks his foot down and spins himself around and up and he’s not high if he’s that coordinated.</p>
<p>“Not that one again,” Joe says as the hands go down over the keys.</p>
<p>Steven ignores him and starts fiddling around in F minor again, like he has for the past three weeks.  No wonder Tom decided to stay out last night, Joe thinks, because they do have various other fucking songs but just this one over and over, that’s all Steven does.  Even if it’s a great fucking song, or a great fucking intro and half a chorus, because Joe is still trying to work it out but Steven keeps shifting his fucking ideas and telling Joe to just go with it and play the fucking guitar, that’s why he’s around right?  He’s such a fucking asshole.</p>
<p>Still, Joe gets up on the bench with Steven.  He’s in the way of Steven’s elbow right away and of course Steven just keeps going, jamming his pointy arm into Joe’s ribs whenever, but Steven is always sticking his fingers in Joe’s strings without asking so fair is fair.  And it’s cool watching Steven play the piano, spread his hands and close them around the chords, picking out a little bit more of the melody every time he reaches out for it.  He chills out in front of a piano more than he ever does when he’s beating poor Kramer on the drums, hectoring the poor fuck on the proper usage of a stick, or twirling around his mic stand or doing pretty much anything else involving the band.  Different touch, the way he plays it.  When he plays the harmonica, well, he’s good at it too, but he also looks like he’s having a fucking brawl between his mouth and fingers.</p>
<p>He just plays the piano and Joe leans on him, watching it.  Eventually the coffee’s too cold to bother drinking and Joe sticks his mug on the top of the piano.  Keeps leaning on Steven as the man hunches over more and more, till finally Steven puts his head down on the keys and rolls his eye back over the broken chords.  “What are you doing up there?” he says.</p>
<p>Joe shrugs, lets his arms dangle down around Steven.  Digs his chin a comfortable groove around Steven’s shoulderblade till Steven twines his arm around and back and gets it around Joe’s waist.  Steven sometimes moves around like his joints are all disconnected and his brain’s the most disconnected of all, but this time he just bends out from under Joe and pulls down on Joe’s waist, and Joe’s laid out like that.  Then Joe’s hand comes down on the keyboard, and his head on Steven’s other arm that’s still resting on the piano and the small of his back rolling over Steven’s thigh, and he’s laid out and Steven is grinning like a fucking idiot at him.</p>
<p>“My fair lady,” Steven snickers.  “Got swept off your feet by the man you came to beat.”</p>
<p>“That’s pretty fucking awful, even for you,” Joe says.  He pulls his hand off the keys and down onto the edge of the wood barring them in, just hanging on by fingertips.</p>
<p>Steven shrugs.  “If I used up all my goodies at first morning’s light, what’d I have left when the piper comes calling at night?”</p>
<p>“Still bad,” Joe starts off, to thin air, and he ends up finishing in Steven’s mouth.  </p>
<p>He has to let go of the piano, and so does Steven, and they both really just should get off the bench and onto the damn floor, or maybe into a bedroom so they don’t traumatize anybody.  Joe can’t remember who else might be lying around here, after all.  Instead Joe jacks up his leg, gets his foot braced on the piano leg so Steven can twist up against it and lean against something while he’s getting Joe’s shirt off, and Joe kind of forgets he came over to be mad at the bastard for whatever last night, again.</p>
<p>*	*	*</p>
<p>There were other reasons, like love, because Joe does have a fucking heart even if it’s as stupid fucking punchdrunk as the rest of him sometimes, but also because somebody between Joe and Steven was a good thing.  She saw that too.</p>
<p>He can’t be angry all the time.  It takes too much energy, too much effort, and also it makes him feel shitty for no fucking reason these days, considering he doesn’t get anything out of it except the urge to plunge into the nearest baggie of dope.  He can’t fucking remember anyway what he was trying to get.  So it’s better to just…get away.  Find people who can help with that.  Get rid of all the reasons.</p>
<p>It’s really fucking easy, too, once he gets the hang of it.  Easier than anything else, and that, he thinks at that time, that really says something about how much it all meant in the end.</p>
<p>*	*	*</p>
<p>Once in a while the drugs were so good they made them make up.  Or forget that they hadn’t made up, or something like that.  Anyway, there was that time, which these days Joe does think really happened—because there were the times that didn’t but that maybe happened in some other universe because it just fucking hurt too much realizing it didn’t happen here—that time, when they were stuck somewhere and bored and Steven fell asleep next to him.  Last fucking time Joe had seen him sleep, and then Joe couldn’t remember.</p>
<p>He got down on his knees for some reason—they were off on their own, because everyone was pissed at them and they were pissed at everyone and also at each other, but neither of them wanted to blink first—and got fascinated with Steven’s shirt.  Some crazy thing with stripes and Joe was tracing one white line with his fingertip when Steven woke up.</p>
<p>It was like one time when they went up to New York, before they were big, and they were killing time in a movie theater and time just could slip by so quick.  Joe thought they were back there, and he unzipped Steven’s pants and pulled out Steven’s cock and wrapped his mouth around it.  Steven bucked up once, then went all soft and stretched-out, his hand flopping by Joe’s head, batting at Joe’s hair sometimes, sucking his breath through his teeth.  Then he crawled after Joe when Joe was wiping his mouth off and falling back onto the floor, getting down there and sticking his hand down Joe’s pants and then curling up by Joe afterward, going back to sleep.</p>
<p>No, he didn’t really think they were in some New York flick house.  It was weird like that sometimes, your head was so fucking gone and yet you had moments that were clearer than crystal, than any sober genius was ever going to have.  It was just, you never could even get close to those moments, let alone hold onto them.  When they woke up again they trashed the whole fucking room between them and Joe never thought about it again till he was sober.</p>
<p>*	*	*</p>
<p>His girlfriend walks in on him listening to the albums and just sits with him for a while.  She’s easier to talk to about some things.  Or maybe Joe has figured out better how to talk about them these days.  Something around there.  Anyway, he puts his head back and looks at the ceiling.  “The first time he opened his mouth, really…without all that bullshit and just sang, you know…”</p>
<p>“I want to meet him,” she says.  She smiles at him.  She’s too young and beautiful and just better than what he’s really earned with his life so far, but he’s fucking selfish that way.  “You like him so much, so I can’t see how it wouldn’t go right.”</p>
<p>“I don’t,” Joe says.  He shifts while he’s talking, hearing how that sounds.  Still a musician even if he’s a broke fucking broken one these days.  Still listening for it.  Somehow he hasn’t—the drugs haven’t made him forget how to do that.  They just made him stop trying for a while.  He’s on less right now, though, and somewhere in there he’s taking in the difference that makes.</p>
<p>She laughs at him.  “Oh, you do.  You should just hear yourself.”</p>
<p>He almost argues with her about that, but he’s still busy listening.  And maybe she’s right.</p>
<p>*	*	*</p>
<p>So some fucking reunion, sitting down to lunch with managers in tow.  They got some things off their chests and that went better than Joe would’ve figured, and yeah, ended up seeing the light.  But it didn’t close up all the shit that had gone down between them before.  They were brothers, said somebody.  Okay.  Brothers don’t fuck each other.</p>
<p>It was like somebody flipping over Joe’s guitar and making him play wrong-handed.  He knew where everything was and how it worked in theory, but he wasn’t comfortable with it and Steven wasn’t either.  They were just working with each other.</p>
<p>And then there was getting clean.  </p>
<p>Joe came back and he was still feeling like his skin had come back from the dry cleaners stiff and tight, and they had to get Steven the fuck out of there before he went and stopped his heart for good.  He didn’t think too much on it while they were doing it—Steven to this day thinks they all sat down beforehand and did a fucking thesis, but it was just being sober enough to remember all the shit from the past few years and having a steady enough hand to write it down—he just wanted to get it out of the way and get.  Used to being himself again.  Sober was almost like being high for the first time, that feeling of things being fucking weird and not being sure if it was you about to be sick or what.</p>
<p>So Steven went off for a month and a half and Joe got used to sitting with himself and having a fucking mind again.  And then Steven came back and was walking around with the same look on his face, and—remembered how to talk again.  Talk <i>to</i> you, not at you or over you or any other direction.  He was doing it to all of them, just jumping back in, uncomfortable as fuck in his own head but since it was Steven, he was just going to spread the discomfort around till they all got used to it, and one day he made Joe laugh.  Joe and the rest of the room, watching Steven fuck around, and Steven wasn’t going for anyone in particular but now Joe remembered what it was like to want the fucking idiot to pay attention to him.</p>
<p>You have to rediscover what things felt without the drugs, is how he keeps putting it to people.  Those high moments when you’re sober, what you were chasing with the drugs and then end up getting rusty at getting without them, but you can’t really rediscover that first time, stoned or sober.  Because there’s always that edge, the second time around, when you figure out you <i>miss</i> it and that’s why you want to feel the first time again.  That moment when you’re staring at the sun and feeling the old burns prickle, and you think even knowing what that hurt was like—because of how it hurt—you want it the fuck back.</p>
<p>Never stick your hand in the fire twice.  Asshole didn’t know anything about anything, whoever said that.</p>
<p>*	*	*</p>
<p>The first time he heard Steven sing, he wanted to tell the man to shut up.  Because when you hear that, and you don’t know what to say, and you just think one fucking moment, one second, let me take it in and then I’ll come up with something—but it’s the kind of thing that just doesn’t give you a second to take it in or think or breathe.  Just gets you, like that, and you’re gone and all you can do is shut up.  </p>
<p>He wanted Steven to stop because Jesus, how could <i>anybody</i> not shut up?  And he wanted Steven to keep going—he wanted that thing Steven did to keep going.  Steven himself could just get out of the way of it.  Except, he gets later, it doesn’t work like that.  If it did, it’d just be too fucking easy, and he guesses with something like that, it has to be hard or else nobody would ever really care.</p>
<p>It still gets him.  He’s worked and worked and worked and he knows it better than anybody but Steven, but every time it gets him and he ends up wanting the whole world to <i>shut up</i>, just for one damn, beautiful second.  And he still doesn’t know what to say.</p>
<p>*	*	*</p>
<p>“We back to being mad at each other?” Steven says, loping after Joe.</p>
<p>Joe shrugs, fiddles with his guitar.  He runs out of hallway and turns into a room, any room, just wherever and promptly crashes his knee into a chair because the lights are off.  The chair moves and he can’t put out his hands because he’s got his guitar and Steven grabs him back by the waist.  Puts him on his feet and then stands there, behind Joe, and he is twitching his hands and flipping his scarf and doing all those damn little things and Joe knows that without even turning around.</p>
<p>“Are we?” Steven asks, and his breath ghosts past Joe’s right arm.</p>
<p>A couple broken chords flutter out from beneath Joe’s fingers.  He stares down at his hands and Steven cranes his head around Joe’s other side like the demented clown he is.  “Look, just fucking leave me alone for a second.”</p>
<p>Steven doesn’t do anything.  He’s there and quiet and when Joe finally turns, he’s not moving at all.  Then Steven pulls himself up, eel-like, all that extra flash and twist gone for a second and it’s just that simple movement, him pulling away.  He can do that when he wants to.  Everyone sees him flapping around and jabbering and thinks he’s nothing more than that, a squawk and a leer, but if that had been true Joe would have jammed his foot up Steven’s ass for good years ago. </p>
<p>He’s sober.  He’s trying.  He knows he never did manage that and occasionally he knows he never will.</p>
<p>“What the hell is the matter with you?” Steven finally says.  He’s got his back to the hallway, where the light is, and all Joe can see is the way his hand twists by his side, like he’s trying to coil something back up.  Keep it down, keep it in.  “I didn’t come back for you to just fuck off again, Perry.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t—”  The strings under Joe’s hand whine like beaten dogs and he has to clamp his other hand around the neck to choke it off.</p>
<p>Steven doesn’t talk for once.  He just kicks back the chair Joe tripped over, folds himself into it.  Jams in a knee there and lets an arm dangle there, like somebody tossed his puppet fucking body into it.  He pulls at one of his feet with both hands.</p>
<p>“Fuck off,” Joe says limply.  His tongue rolls like a dead thing in his mouth and his hands fist up too much to play anything but a smash-up.</p>
<p>“Do I ever get to tell you what I don’t like about you?” Steven suddenly mutters.  He’s still rocking back and forth, tugging his shoe, and when the chair begins to swing under him the hallway light stretches far enough to show the bare ankle coming out.  “You’re a fucking asshole and a fucking hypocrite and a fucking liar.  That’s what I don’t like about you.”</p>
<p>Joe puts his guitar down before he does something stupid with it.  He likes this one.  He wants to keep it.  He can’t fucking afford to buy another one.  He gets it away from him and feels like he’s belly-up, throat out, under the gun, knife, anything you can think of.  Fucking naked and not like he’s undressed.  That he doesn’t care about too much.  He once could look however the fuck he would’ve liked and the world would have licked his feet anyway.  You don’t just drop that memory.</p>
<p>He just feels like how he always feels, talking to Steven.  Like there’s a way to shut up the man because Joe knows what he’s talking about, he’s not a fucking teenager anymore and he does know, but somewhere between his brain and his mouth he always loses it so he just goes with shutting up Steven.  “I’m not a fucking li—what did I lie about?  I told you—everything I called you I meant.  When I said it.”</p>
<p>Steven has his shoe off except for the big toe and he’s cradling his instep in his hands.  He looks up at Joe.  “You’re a liar because you said you weren’t coming back.”</p>
<p>Joe’s breath catches over his teeth.  He coughs, sucks back, still has bits of it hanging from his mouth as he stares at Steven.  “You want me to fucking keep <i>meaning</i> that?”</p>
<p>“I want you to fucking realize you said that and you fucking meant it more than when you said you were coming back,” Steven says.  Careful, his words not somersaulting over each other to get out of his mouth.  He slouches in the seat and scoops one hand down to catch the shoe finally falling.  “Joe, if you want to keep beating yourself off in the corner, go on ahead.  You’re the one who thinks it’s good for you.  I mean, I can’t <i>make</i> you fuck—”</p>
<p>“Why the hell aren’t you even trying?” Joe snaps.</p>
<p>Steven breathes in slowly.  He only started doing that since they all got back together.  Waiting out a beat or two, picking up pauses the way he used to pick up every available note and then some he’d just fucking swipe from the rest of them.  “Joe.  I’m…we’re talking about working, here.  Or how we aren’t working.  Because every single time I try to give you a goddamn—”</p>
<p>“No, you’re not.  You’re talking about fucking, like you always do, and—”</p>
<p>“Well, because that’s how I fucking talk and think and work and what the fuck am I supposed to do about it?” Steven snarls.  </p>
<p>He gets up and stalks around the chair, and his bare foot is slapping where his shoed foot is thumping and why the hell Joe is even noticing that, Joe doesn’t know.  Because Steven is heading for the door and fuck, fuck, <i>fuck</i>, but if they do this again Joe is not coming back.   Because they are clean and straight and it is fucking <i>hell</i> because now he remembers, he knows, he sees what that first time was and how he felt about it and what he misses from it and no fucking drug is ever going to wipe that one out of his head.  Not now.  He had his chance at that and passed it up.</p>
<p>And Steven gets to the door and closes it, and comes back and Jesus Christ, Joe is dropping his knees even before Steven shoves him up against the table, shoves his ass down and kisses his stupid fucking mouth.  </p>
<p>Steven pulls off and Joe stares up at him.  It’s nearly total dark now, can’t see a thing, just the slope of Steven’s arm and shoulder under Joe’s hands, and the knee pressing into Joe’s shin, and the uneven breath outlining Joe’s face for him.  “Well, there’s your try, Perry,” Steven says.  “Happy now?”</p>
<p>He moves and Joe tugs at him, curls up his hands over Steven’s shirt, his nails sliding over whatever the fuck it’s made of so his weak fucking fingers sprawl wide instead of closing down like he wants them to.  That knee gets out of the way of Joe’s shin and Joe nearly falls off the table chasing it, rubbing his leg up against Steven’s calf trying to get it around the other man, get something in Steven’s way.  He can’t see but he presses his face into what he thinks is Steven’s shoulder, working his mouth at whatever he can get, just sucking it, soaking it, thinking maybe something will stick and Steven finally pulls up his head and that’s when Joe realizes he’s making these hitching noises down in his throat.  Hitching and catching and ragged, because he cannot fucking—he just—he cannot fucking <i>talk</i>, goddamn it.  He is not the fucking one who talks, he is not the fucking one who does that but he wishes sometimes.  Right now.</p>
<p>His mouth keeps moving dumbly, working at plain air.  Steven puts his hand on the side of Joe’s jaw and Joe grabs the man’s thumb.  Bites it, didn’t want to do that but he doesn’t want it to get away and he can’t think of what else to do.  Loses it anyway, pain in the root of one canine where Steven’s knuckle catches, and Steven swears at him and kisses him again, longer.  His tooth stops hurting but his lips start, and then his lungs because he can’t breathe but he can’t get himself off either.</p>
<p>“You’re an asshole, Joe,” Steven says, sighing, biting Joe’s lip, slipping his tongue into Joe’s mouth.  It swipes around once, not quite right, like having your finger slide a half-step off where it should be, and then runs over the aching half-moon in Joe’s lip.  “So what, I have to fuck you into this?”</p>
<p>“Worked the first time,” Joe says, voice jangling.  He keeps clawing at Steven’s arms, still not getting any damn grip over the man’s shirt.  “Jesus Christ, just.  It’s not that hard for you.”</p>
<p>Steven jerks and Joe lets slip a string of curses, scrabbling at him.  So Steven pins his wrists back against the table edge.  “You’re so goddamn,” he starts, and then puts his head down along the side of Joe’s arm.  “Almighty God.  Him and you, and you should fuck off, Joe Perry.”</p>
<p>“Just.”  Joe twists once, hard, and then slumps till his chin nestles into Steven’s hair.  “Steven, just…”</p>
<p>“Fuck you,” Steven says, raising his head.  He looks at Joe and he flinches, and then he settles there, watching Joe, nothing else in his eyes.  He lets go of Joe and drags his hand back into his hair, pulling it back from his ear till it looks like he’s trying to split the skin along the side of his face. </p>
<p>Joe moves his arm.  It feels stiff.  He gets it to bend and he moves it up and his fingers are shaking so he can’t just put his hand out.  He has to let his fingertips skitter across the tension in Steven’s face, doesn’t want to be the one slashing it up this time.  Thinks he fucked up at that when he feels the skin stretching under his fingers, but then Steven puts his hand down and Joe slides his hand where Steven’s was, except without the viciousness because he is <i>trying</i>.  He is trying and he wants to try and that’s all he’s got, goddamn it, Steven.  All he’s got but he’ll give it up and goddamn it, look at him and see that and—Steven moves a little when Joe leans forward.  Doesn’t know, does know, they do fucking know each other, after all, even if it’s taking a while to remember how that works.  And Joe tries again and this time Steven lets him kiss him.</p>
<p>They break, breathe, Steven dropping his hands to Joe’s waist.  Then uses that to pull Joe in again, a little longer.  Joe hooks his fingers and gets enough of Steven’s shirt for a handhold, finally, and their mouths shift and then that, there, like <i>that</i>, all the fuck over again and for a moment Joe’s throat closes so hard it hurts.  He ignores it and Steven ignores it and the pain passes and then it’s fucking <i>good</i>.  God, he doesn’t remember it like this, but he’s going to now.</p>
<p>“We are how old?” Steven mutters.  Pushes himself up into Joe anyway, doesn’t fucking care if they’re old enough or young enough to handle it, nice that they’re starting to agree on things again.  “Making out in a—where is this?  Couldn’t fucking get us a hotel room at least, Perry?”</p>
<p>“You never were a great date anyway,” Joe mutters back.  Now that he’s got a damn grip, he’s trying to find the end of Steven’s shirt but the damn thing is longer than he remembers.  Another fucking thing to leave in the last decade, he thinks.  “Fuck me already.”</p>
<p>Steven pauses again, his hands spread-eagled across Joe’s hips, and Joe almost winces, almost looks up.  Then he hears the way Steven’s breath ripples out of his lips, even before the words come, and he lets out his caught breath and Steven just rides out the roll that puts into Joe’s hips.  Then his fingers curve down, catching on belt-loops and waistband, tugging and pressing, the vee of them narrowing that burn going down through Joe so it doubles up on itself and he has to press his head to Steven’s shoulder, gasping.</p>
<p>“Need these off,” Steven says, pulling at Joe’s jeans.  “Can’t fuck your <i>pants</i>, Perry.”</p>
<p>“Well, so fucking get them off,” Joe snaps, his head back up and their mouths sealing over each other again, and they are whatever fucking age but they’re back.  And he’s never been so high.</p>
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